Sunday, August 15, 2010

The Journey

I am not sure what happened or when it happened. I have been enjoying the JOURNEY. That is not like me. 


For most of my life, I have anticipated, struggled through, and then enjoyed the finished product, not the journeyof getting there.


Come Christmas time I want the tree up, the lights on, the ornaments hung. I want to sit on the sofa, glass of wine in hand and enjoy the tree. I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO DECORATE IT. It is the tree I want to enjoy, not the journey of getting it up and ready.


When going on a vacation, while everyone dislikes the process of "Airporting" on the way to your vacation spot, for the week before the vacation I am close to neurotic. I DO NOT ENJOY THE ANTICIPATION OF THE VACATION. I not only dislike the "Airporting" of it," but I cannot wait until the vacation itself begins at the chosen destination and I make myself a little crazy until it begins.


I DO NOT LIKE BEING IN BETWEEN PROJECTS. Three years ago I signed an agreement with The Chicago Children's Museum on Navy Pier for them to put Michael's Museum into storage for a brief time until it could be installed at the museum. Three years. Each day felt like a year. Each year felt like a decade. We are closer to realizing MM at CCM but we are still on the journey, and it has made me very crazy.


For the last ten years I have been sitting in front of my computer and writing. I love writing, I love my stories, I enjoy sharing them with a limited audience of family and friends. The feedback is good. I look forward to my morning coffee and spending a few hours letting the words and sentences pour out. I enjoy reading what I have written. Sometimes what comes out surprises me.


Recently, I sent out a query letter and in a return e-mail, the publishing house requested to see my manuscript. It is a body of creative non-fiction writing in memoir form that I have been adding to since 2000.


For the last three weeks I have been organizing, reviewing, editing the body of work in preparation to sending it off to the publisher. They may like it or they may say, "Thanks, but no thanks." The odds are against them wanting to publish my work, but then again the odds were against their requesting my manuscript as a result of the first query letter I have ever sent.


I have been enjoying the process of polishing and building my manuscript. I have enjoyed revisiting and perfecting the pieces I have written. I have been enjoying adding to and making transitions between the pieces. I realize that I have no expectations and I am not setting up any hopes on the outcome of the publisher having requesting seeing my manuscript. It may or may not happen. What I realized is that I was enjoying the process and journey of writing about things that interest me, that I wonder about, that I care about.


I realized that it has been the journey of writing that has kept me going and kept me sane. Then a little voice in my head said to me, "The journey is all there really is." And I agreed.

1 comment:

  1. Ah, Michael---how true....How come it takes a whole lifetime's journey to figure that out?

    ReplyDelete

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